# Transcontinental Band Goodnight, Texas Serve Up Roots Folk on New Single

- Link: https://indierockcafe.com/2012/10/transcontinental-band-goodnight-texas-serve-up-roots-folk-on-new-single/
- Published: 2012-10-09T16:31:01-04:00
- Author: Max Hammer

Formed in 2010, the band **Goodnight**, Texas, are an unsigned indie roots folk 
band with an interesting story behind their name. The two main members are **Avi
Vinocur** from **San Francisco** and **Patrick Dyer Wolf** from **Chapel Hill,**
North Carolina. In a clever move to decide on a band name, the pair decided to locate
a geographic mid-point between their two cities, which sit at opposite coasts of
the continental United States, to come up with their name. It just so happened that
Goodnight, an unincorporated community of 18 people located in the northern Texas
panhandle on the outskirts of **Amarillo**, was the one.

However, they did have to dip a little bit more south between the actual two cities
to find their spot. More importantly is how remarkable it is that two musicians 
from completely different communities and cultures were able to come together from
such distance to create an authentic-sounding folk style, with obvious roots folk
and even bluegrass influences, as evidenced on their new single released this past
week, “Jesse Got Trapped In A Coal Mine.” Vinocur’s deep ancestral roots in the 
Appalachian hills of western Maryland show through the mandolin-driven elegy, “Jesse
Got Trapped In A Coal Mine.”

“I grew up hearing stories more or less like ‘Jesse Got Trapped in a Coal Mine’ 
about distant relatives of mine,” says Vinocur. “As a kid I would pore over our 
collections of 19th century tintype photographs of relatives and friends of our 
family, and I became fascinated with life that long ago. It seemed so dark and beautiful,
but unknown: the clothes, the weathered faces. That fascination became a theme for
this new record of ours. To me, ‘Jesse’ is like one of those family stories – you’ll
never know if it really happened that way, but you choose to pass it down anyway.”

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Together with bassist **Jonathan Kirchner**, drummer **Andrew Laubacher**, and sometimes
other musicians, Goodnight, Texas has produced a dynamic range out of a ragged orchestra,
and American stories that should be welcoming to many fans of roots folk.

“Jesse Got Trapped In A Coal Mine” – **Goodnight, Texas** from _A Long Life of Living_